Friday, September 15, 2006

Final

Ever-faithful Anonymous, who has been with us from the beginning, pokes the lifeless hulk that is Nats Blog.

Yes, we are, in fact, dead. I haven't posted in over a month, dexys and SuperNova haven't since the Brandon Watson era. Don't expect much in the future either. Nick Carr, talking about something else, said it best when it comes to blogging: "It's a fun diversion for a while - and then it turns into drudgery." I admire those, like many of those on the sidebar, who can keep it up. I can't.

One thing I've learned is that the phrase "user-generated content" is a euphemism of the worst kind, because it both obscures and denigrates its subject. It obscures the real hard work that creative writing and thinking require, as if good writing just emits from natural processes, like heat or CO2 from an organism. If we called it journalism, commentary or even just writing, it would connote the effort required in a way that is more accurate that "generating content", Bloggers do themselves a disservice by calling themselves bloggers -- they should start using the word "writer". I know, it feels funny, sounds pretentious and all that, but that's the point. Being a "writer" conveys a sense that you are committed to a craft and art that is likely difficult and nonremunerative. Why not use it, especially for serious bloggers? Why would you want to be known as a "generator"? These guys, and those on the sidebar, certainly aren't just generators, and I wish my only choice was not just to free ride off of their creative genius.

Anyway, "teh Internets" is great and all, but writing of any quality requires work, and that requires time, which requires money, the last two of which I do not have nearly enough of to support this hobby. I'll probably still hang out here to make fun of Bowden. Thanks to all of you who read and commented.

Friday, August 04, 2006

We're Not Dead Yet

The title refers to this blog, not the Nationals, unfortunately. The 2006 season is very much dead, and I didn't want to wait until October to do the autopsy. Apparently we had the best OBP of any team for July, and we've been enjoying the offensive exploits of our new cornerstone LF all year, so a defective pitching staff clearly killed this patient. I went looking through the Hardball Times Win Shares database to see where it all went wrong.

Below is a list of pitchers from 2005 that had non-zero pitching Win Shares for the Nats, the first number listed. The next number is their pitching Win Shares (for the Nats) for 2006. For guys who went to other teams I tried to fill in a new guy for 2006 who is comparable. The color scheme is Red means lost pitching value, Green means gained pitching value and Yellow means a wash.

Conclusions: Basically the workhorses of our starting staff last year completely deserted us this year -- Patterson to injury, Livan to suckiness, and Loaiza to the A's, replaced meekly by Ortiz. Chief's value is down but mostly due to opportunity, I guess, and by the end of the year will probably be close to a wash. We never replaced Carrasco and Ayala. Rauch and Armas improved, but only slightly, and the green at the bottom is a bit misleading, as all of those numbers are so small to be immaterial.

It is probably impossible for a team to essentially lose its starting rotation and expect to win. Perhaps that will make some feel better.

More Intuitive ERV

Tangotiger over at the blog for THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball points out that Carl Crawford's steal of home earlier this week was a very smart play, as he risked relatively little for a bigger gain. A few weeks ago I pointed to a interview with Jamie Moyer that revealed that he had an intiuitive understanding of the costs and benefits of men on base that matched the ERV table.

Bill James in his New Historical Baseball Abstract came up with a rough way to estimate "intelligence" of a ballplayer from the basic baseball stats. A more direct way of measuring that might be to assess different decisions of players based on the risk/reward as determined by Win Value or Win Expectancy or some other measure. Baserunning presents clear examples of such instances, but I bet there are others.

Monday, July 03, 2006

What Was Not Said (Cont.)

Federal Baseball throws some Platonic cold water on our collective hyperventilating about Bowden's permanence by pointing out that we only see vague shadows on the cave wall -- the truth is not within our vision (Buck sez the "dawg" hand-shadow is Bowden's, though). This sobering post has prompted me to provide some clarification about my thoughts on the news.

First, it may be the case that Bowden actually has the qualities listed in the "Not Said" column. I doubt it, but I could be wrong. One piece of evidence in my favor is that Kasten didn't mention any of them, and if they didn't exist, he couldn't mention them.

But if they did exist, he still might not mention them. Under what circumstance would he not mention characteristics that seem to be more compelling to justify the selection of a General Manager? When he doesn't really care whether he convinces the audience or not. And this is the more important point I was trying to make. Kasten could care less whether the media or the fans are convinced that he made the right move -- he picked a GM that has some experience, including some minor success, which doesn't make his boss a laughingstock among the members of the dining club Lerner just paid $450M to join. (Though some of the new guard like Beane and Epstein aren't losing sleep over it and might be licking their chops). We won't know if it's the right move for a few years, and if it isn't, Bowden will be canned and replaced by a Dombrowski, Coletti, Duquette, ... hell, even a Minaya. And guess what? The Nats will still be in the big leagues, will be in a new stadium, will be drawing at least 20K per game, and the value of the franchise will be appreciating ... even if we remain mired in the 70-win slums of the National League.

If you believe this, it might depress you. But I'm reading a book that suggests that when you've "bought in" to something and it becomes yours, your mind helps you through it by accentuating the positive and making you think you made the right choice, and in the end, most people who face an inescapable situation end up happier than those with options. Well, we did win 9-1 tonight ....

Sunday, July 02, 2006

What is Said, What is not Said

Let's take a look at what Stan Kasten and others said about Jim Bowden Friday, and what they did not say.

What They Said

"Jim is very smart. By smart, I mean analytical."

This distinguishes Bowden from the guys who sell DeezNats t-shirts, Phillies fans and Bob Boone, but not any of the other 30 GMs or better candidates for the job.

"I also think he's very resourceful. . . . And right now, as we're building this -- needing to speed the process up as quickly as we can, needing to shave any unnecessary steps -- I need someone resourceful. I think Jim is really good at that."

This describes a candidate who would be good when "resources" are limited. What does that say about our new owners approach to the club? This is usually said in reference to Bowden's time with the miserly Marge Schott, who once gave her staff "Welcome to the 1990 World Series" chocolates on Opening Day 1996. Is Lerner thinking "If it worked for Marge ..."?

"He established a relationship with the winning group very early on. He was very smart about that, and he showed them how hard he worked at this"

He's very good at sucking up. How many people do you know who are good at sucking up are also good at their substantive job? Aren't they mutually exclusive?

"It's time for this franchise to have some stability," Tavares said. "This is a good step in that direction. You've got somebody who's smart, somebody with a plan, somebody who's been involved with building things here, who's going to keep it going in the right direction."

The right direction? Since July 2005, we've been heading for the bottom of the National League. Perhaps he's talking about keeping player salaries low.

What Was Not Said

He has a proven track record of success.

He has the respect of the other General Managers in the league.

He is expert at spotting and developing baseball talent.

He knows how to negotiate with player agents.

He is good at running an organization, and his employees respect him and would move mountains for him

Back in May, I asked what exactly did the Lerners buy with their $450 million, and pointed out that it was part of MLB's monopoly, not the on-field success of the Nats, which is economically rather low on their priority lists. This decision provide further evidence of that assertion.

Saturday, July 01, 2006

End of the First Half, with the Score 33 to 48

So a milestone has been reached. 81 games, one half of the season gone, one half remains. Time to take stock.

The Nats finished the half 33-48. Many will compare that to last year's first half, where we went 50-31, seventeen games better. What I'd like to do, though, is to look at our record over the past 162 games, the first half of this year plus the second half of last year, where we went 31-50. That provides a full-season record of 64-98.

That is a terrible record. Only 13 out of the 150 "team-seasons" in the past 5 years (30 MLB teams, 5 seasons each) had that record or worse, less than 9%. Let's look at those teams, and what happened to their managers:

So basically a non-first-year manager who compiles such a record gets fired, or keeps his job thanks to the wisdom of the baseball geniuses who run the Royals and Orioles. An exception is San Diego, who actually made the right call, as Bochy would lead the Padres -- yes, the 82-80 Padres -- to the playoffs in 2005. None of the other retentions worked out.

It is conventional wisdom that Frank Robinson will not be fired this season. It would make a lot of sense to do so, however. We all know what kind of manager he is, and how much he can get out of this group of players. We should replace with someone who does things differently, even an interim manager, to see what we have left in this team, to know better what to do in the offseason.

It only makes sense, but it won't be done. I wake up this morning to find that "stability" is the vision of the new owners. Though that article hints that Robinson might not last after this year, we will have wasted the next 81 games as an information gathering session. But hey, we'll be "stable" -- stable like the Royals.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Memory Lane

Like my last post, I'm still thinking about last year. (Do you blame me, after the past two weeks, in which we are 3-12, having been outscored 101 to 55, and having scored more than 3 runs only 4 times?) In that one I compared the Mets' current record with ours from the 1st half of 2005, because I was surprised to find that the Mets did not have a better record than that. But that got me thinking about our second-half collapse, and wondered how the pre-All Star Break 2005 Nats stack up against the Mets in other categories besides wins and losses. Also, I decided to throw the "surprise" team of the year, the Tigers, into the comparison for fun (as of Tuesday's games).

Here, the obvious difference is offense, as our runs per game is more than 1 run below the Mets and Tigers. As a result, our Expected W/L was nine games below our actual, prompting the skeptics to predict our fall last year. As we'll see below, it was the power in our offense that was anemic, and in the second half it got worse, not better as expected, which caused the bottom to drop out. (I have not adjusted the numbers for ballpark, but all three teams play in pitcher's parks, so it should not make much difference).

As for 2006, note the Tigers and Mets defenses, the big difference between the two clubs. This bodes well for Detroit.

When it came to getting on base (the second number in the series -- AVG/OBP/SLG/OPS), we were just as good as the 2006 clubs, but our power was awful, which left a lot of those runners on base. I also suspect that the hit and runs and bad baserunning cost a lot too. We were 50% succesful on steals, about 25% less than you need to be to actually generate runs. In the second half we dropped to .243/.313/.373/.686. Thank you, Preston Wilson!

Here you see another weakness of the Nats last year -- the pitching was good, but not dominant, as indicated by the relatively low K/G and K/BB numbers. As a result, it could not save us when the offense went completely sour. One of the most depressing and telling stats from last year was our July team ERA, which was the best month of the year, at precisely the moment when we lost all those games and our lead.

As for the 2006 clubs, pitching is where the Tigers have excelled so far, nearly half a run better than the Mets in ERA, and under 3 walks per game.

Bottom Line

As I see it, both the Tigers and Mets have more solid fundamental numbers to support their records than the Nats had last year. If either club is to make a slide backwards in the second half, I'd bet on the Mets, and I'd predict it is a pitching problem that causes it. I doubt it will be 31-50 dramatic like ours last year, and the rest of the NL East is so weak that it won't cost them the division. The Tigers strike me as the real deal, and the bold prediction by some that the AL Wild Card will not come from the East is looking better and better.

Monday, June 26, 2006

The Benchmark

By any measure, the New York Mets are having a superb season. The sit atop the NL East, 11.5 games ahead of the second place Phillies, and have controlled the division from Opening Day. Even their Tradesports contract for winning the division has gone from about 50 before the season to around 95 today, meaning the Mets likely have a 95% chance of winning the division.

But there is one measure that us Nats fan can take some pride in.

If the Mets split with the Red Sox and Yankees this week -- no small feat -- they will be 50-31, the same first-half record as our beloved nine in 2005.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Baseball on Television

This post, which appears to reprint a Thomas Sowell column from 2002, has a lot of good thoughts about baseball on television. My favorite point asks why we never see a camera angle that shows the whole field. I'd be perfectly happy if the standard angle was from high behind the plate, perhaps with an inset showing the traditional "behind the pitcher" angle so you can see the pitches. I'm looking forward to this weekend's game between the Nats and O's because I'll be sitting behind the plate upper deck, which has become my favorite place to watch a game, because you can see the whole field, and judge the distances and angles best among runner, fielder and ball, which are indispensible to evaluating many plays.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Baseball, Blackouts and Buyouts

This weekend I was finalizing our summer vacation plans, and noticed that the house we are renting in the Outer Banks has WiFi. "Cool," I thought, "I'll bring the laptop and watch the Nats on vacation." But then I hesitated -- a few weeks ago I was in Princeton, NJ and tried to watch the Nats on my laptop, but was told I was in the blackout area. Wondering whether Corolla, NC would be subject to Nats blackout, I found a relevant Zip Code and checked out "the list," and sure enough, the Outer Banks is part of the Nats' empire, which we now know stretches from Eastern North Carolina to the middle of New Jersey and to Central Pennsylvania. So it looks like I won't be watching Nationals' games on vacation this summer.

I am not alone. This story on Yahoo chronicles similar frustrations of fans around the country. As Capitol Punishment points out, the reason for the blackout rules is not to protect ticket sales (well, not anymore), it's to protect advertising revenue, which is still the predominant way baseball telecasts are paid for.

Most clubs earn revenue from telecasts of their games by selling exclusive rights to the local broadcasters; "exclusive" being the key for the broadcaster, who wants to make sure that if you watch the Nats, you see the advertisements it has sold. If you can watch the Nats without seeing those ads, advertisers will soon take their money elsewhere. Also, because the broadcaster is local, the area of exclusivity is measured geographically -- Koons Toyota would pay WDCA-20 to reach people in Arlington, Bethesda and Landover, not people who are "out-of-market" in far away places. So no one cares whether someone in Texas watches Nats games on the Internet -- the advertisements have little value to those viewers. (Blackouts can also theoretically protect the attendance at RFK -- if I can watch on TV I won't go to the park -- but most people agree that TV actually promotes attendance, rather than detract from it.)

But there are several areas where this theory gets mangled by practice in the case of the Nats and MLB.tv. First, of course, is that there are no local broadcasters who paid anyone anything for exclusive rights to Nats games in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. If there were, I'd be perfectly happy watching those games on the local TV like I do here in the D.C. area. The blackout lists for MLB.tv are, at this point, little more than a game of Risk, where the U.S. has been divided up in concept, without any real marketplace analysis behind the assignment.

Second, even here in D.C., watching the games on the MLB.tv, you would still see the advertisements from the local advertisers (assuming MLB.tv didn't cover them up or replace them). The problem for MASN and DC-20 is that those viewers don't get counted in the Nielsen ratings, and thus they won't get paid by the advertisers for those viewers.

But that leads me to my main point -- since this is all about money and not about spite, why can't I choose to "buyout my blackout", or pay extra to watch Nats games anywhere I want, regardless of the exclusive rights sold to a local broadcaster. That premium I paid could go mostly to the local broadcaster affected by my viewing on MLB.tv, to cover any potential "losses" from me not watching on television.

To help me understand why this option is not presented by MLB.tv, I tried to figure out how much that premium would cost. To do this, I started with the basic metric for selling ads, the CPM, which stands for "cost per thousand" (the "M" is the Roman numeral for 1000). According to one website, the average CPM for broadcast television is $20 for a 30-second spot -- in other words, for every 1,000 people that watch that ad, the advertiser pays the broadcaster $20. I think that is a little high for the Nats, but I'll use it here for simplicity.

So, with that $20 CPM, number we can figure out how much I'm "costing" the broadcaster when I watch a game on MLB.tv instead of television: 2 cents for each 30-second ad ($20 divided by 1,000 viewers, or "cost per one" -- CPI?). It sounds like a pittance, but wait, it adds up, because there are a fair number of 30-second spots during a single game. If there are 3 commercials each half-inning, that would be 54 spots (9 innings X 2 halves X 3 spots), plus there are spots in pregame and during pitching changes. A decent estimate is 75 spots (18 inning breaks + 4 pitching changes + 3 pregame/postgame breaks, all X 3 spots). Now, this will be a little high, given that many of the spots will be "house" ads for DC-20 TV shows and ads for the Nats themselves ("Let yourself go!"), so let's reduce our total to 50 ads that will be truly "sold". Thus, for any one game, I am costing the broadcaster $1 (50 x 2 cents) by watching it on MLB.tv instead of television.

$1 doesn't sound too bad, does it? But remember, there are 162 games, so in theory, the premium I'd have to pay to cover the "costs" to the local broadcaster is $162. Now that's probably way too high in reality -- for example, if the Nats are drawing only $15 CPM on only 35 spots per game, then the cost drops to $0.525 per game, or about $85 per season. You could probably think of other ways to whittle that number down, but ultimately my point is that the premium in the end would be a not insignificant number -- a number I'd probably still be willing to pay, but perhaps one that many would not. Now, I still shouldn't have to pay extra to watch in North Carolina or New Jersey or Pennsylvania or anywhere else where the local broadcaster is not showing Nats game. But there is value for where such games are televised.

But even if the number is big, there should still be an incentive to offer it to consumers. Why isn't it? There are transaction costs that must be considered -- it probably would cost something to keep track of my extra payment and make sure I could get the games I paid for -- but given those are probably absorbed in great part by MLB.tv generally, I doubt they would be very high. The real transaction costs is probably the fact that the deals with the broadcasters have already been struck, and don't allow for such a buyout. MLB.tv would have to repoen the deals with MASN and DC-20, and they probably don't want to do that. At least, it seems the additional revenue from allowing buyouts of blackouts isn't enough to make it worth their while.

Another important obstacle is fear of the unknown. Neither MLB.tv, the broadcasters or anyone else really knows what the demand is for Internet-based viewing of games -- it sure seems high, but judging such things is often harder than it looks. Going through the trouble of redoing the basic television deal, pricing the buyout premium, keeping track of additional payments, etc. may not be worth it if demand is lower than expected. But maybe when they have more experience with how people enjoy games on the Internet, there will be a better base on which to build new customer options.

But they'd better figure it out quickly. Because consumers like me can be impatient, and there are other solutions available to us, as the Yahoo story describes. I have heard of, but never used, technological tricks that help you get around the blackouts -- as demand increases for blacked out games, use of these tricks, which entail payment to no one -- will increase. Also, independent companies, such as Sling Media, will offer me a Slingbox to allow access to my Tivo recordings of the games from any Internet connection, even ones in the Outer Banks. I'll have to pay them some money for the technology and maybe a service fee, none of which will go to MLB, the Nats or the broadcaster. Both of these options may be of dubious legality, but that uncertainty cuts both ways. Again, if demand for blackout games increase, so will use of devices and technology like these. It's your choice, MLB.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Walk-off

I'm not as bad as Needham. Sure, I too watched the USA-Italy match instead of the Nats on Saturday, but yesterday I listened to the game on radio as I built a basketball hoop in the driveway with Little DM and his brother. (And when I say "with", I mean it; at one point I said to myself, "Where's my mallet?" and Little DM said "It's in the shed. I'll get it. You focus on the hoop." A five-year-old supervisor.)

I had heard the Nats first run, but then lost track of the game and how the Yankees went ahead. Then I started to listen a bit more closely when the bottom of the ninth began. But of course some socket mishap distracted me, and the next thing I heard was Charlie's voice rise as Zimmerman hit the ball. I ran to the radio, heard "...Cabrera going back..." (a good sign) and then knew it was a walk-off. Charlie did a neat thing by not saying anything as the crowd roared, and for once I didn't care that he didn't tell me the score -- I knew what had happened, the details could wait.

Little DM was right beside me, even he knew it was good and we exchanged several high fives. Later I made a point to show him the highlights on ESPN, and this morning, in his room, when he thought he was alone, I caught a glimpse of him doing a Ryan Zimmerman impersonation: a swing, looking up, holding his fist up as a he ran, then jumping onto an imaginary home plate and being clobbered by his imaginary teammates. Bang, Zoom !!

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Bullpen

Pitchers, it seems to me, are like anyone else; they have good days and bad days. Sometimes they have their stuff, and sometimes they don't. One would think that the main job of the manager, pitching coach and bullpen coach is to figure out whether a guy has it or not in any given day.

Based on this, I've often wondered about managers who like to bring in lots of relief pitchers. It seems to me that by doing that, you are simply increasing the chance that you'll bring in a pitcher who is having a bad day. Maybe, just maybe, the fact that a particular relief pitcher has his stuff today is more important that the lefty-righty matchup, or whether he is coming to bat the next inning.

I don't think Frank ever considers this. This is an obvious second-guess, but I was really hoping at the time that he would have left Jon Rauch in last night after he struck out A-Rod and Cano to end the seventh. Those were huge outs, and Rauch has been struggling lately, I thought it would have been a good confidence boost to send him out there in the 8th to help keep the lid on the game.

But, of course, that didn't happen. Frank, as usual, brought in three more relievers, none of whom had anything, and we blew the game. Frank appears to expect that all of his relievers must be able to perform at the highest level in every game. While that is a reasonable expectation in general for professionals who get paid a lot of money to play this game, the reality of our bullpen requires more nuanced management that appears beyond the ken of our current skipper.

Monday, June 12, 2006

ERV Renovations -- Update

As you know, last month I shut down the ERV Boxscores to redesign the process that creates them. The work has been going pretty well, and this weekend I finally constructed the guts of the new database that will hold the information. It can now calcuate the basic RV and WV for each event. Right now it ascribes all of the value to the batter and pitcher, even if the play has errors or other aspects that should be given to other players involved. I have to code the parts that account for errors, fielding and baserunning.

But the real advantage of this new system is that I have data for every team, not just the Nats. So we'll be able to compare RV and WV with other players in the league. For example, here are the 2005 NL Batting WV Leaders:

What's interesting to me is that most of these guys are starters. I had thought that because closers pitch in high leverage (i.e. high Win Value) situations, the system would be biased in their favor, and they'd cluster near the top. But apparently that's not necesarily the case.

Keep in mind that these numbers are rough and I haven't checked the data thoroughly. But I do think it tells me that when I'm finished that the data will present some interesting things to think about.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

The Draft -- Where Do You Stand?

I don't have nearly enough knowledge to provide any meaningful commentary on the Nats draft selections, so please visit Nationals Farm Authority, Capital Punishment, and Federal Baseball for real information on that. But I will use it as an excuse to comment on an interesting segment I heard last night on XM Radio. Chuck Wilson, who is quite good and is vastly under-utilized on MLB Home Plate, replayed quotes surrounding the controversy over Luke Hochevar, the first overal pick of this year's draft. Hochevar was drafted by the Dodgers last year and nearly signed with them, but then swtiched to agent Scott Boras at the last minute, didn't sign, and opted to re-enter the draft this year.

First, Wilson played a quote from Hochevar's former agent (I didn't catch his name), who complained that Hochevar left a voicemail for some Dodgers executive 45 minutes before he backed out the deal saying how happy and excited he was to be a Dodger. He painted the picture of a kid who went back on his word at the last minute purely for more money. Then Wilson played Scott Boras' reaction to that quote, who argued that the former agent was inexperienced and, in doing the deal with the Dodgers, was essentially putting his interest in establishing relationships with the Dodgers and build up a stable of MLB players ahead of Hochevar's interest, and would have left, in Boras' view, millions of Hochevar's dollars on the table. Then Wilson played a quote from Hochevar, who pretty much echoed Boras' points by saying young players should go with experienced agents like Boras. To me, he'd been coached pretty well on that answer.

Who's right? Who knows. Economically, we'll find out if Hochevar made the right move when we learn the size of his contract with Kansas City, but it seems that being picked first overall will get more $$ than being picked 40th like he was last year. So Hochevar may have made a good gamble, which was largely good because of the weak draft this year. I will say that my first instinct was to side with the former agent, and to view Hochevar as a spoiled greedy kid, but I have to say Boras made a good argument to my rational side that the Dodgers' deal would not have been the best for Hochevar, and his claims about the former agent had the ring of truth to them.

But what struck me as really interesting was this question: On which side of the line, management or player, do we fans typically fall? We obviously identify with the players first and foremost, because we watch them all the time and root for them. But we typically only like players on our team, so when it comes to contract disputes, we can be quick to say that player is greedy if they are threaten to leave or not sign with our club. We also like to complain about large salaries and agents like Boras. On the other hand, if the player is beloved by most fans, then we curse management for not giving in to every demand he makes. In the end, I'm not sure there's a clear answer to the question, but I do think we are not careful enough to consider the different perspectives of the parties involved, and Chuck Wilson's segment on XM helped me understand where guys like Hochevar and Boras are coming from in making the decisions they make.